Traditional cellular architecture uses GGSN/P-GW as mobility anchor and perform service edge (SE) functions, for instance, traffic shaping, lawful interception, charging, etc. All the user packets are delivered to a Gateway GPRS support node (GGSN)/PDN gateways (PGW) through GPRS tunneling protocol (GTP) tunnels for the SE treatment then get routed to various packet networks. GTP is a group of IP-based communications protocols used to carry general packet radio service (GPRS) within GSM, UMTS and LTE networks. GTP is used to encapsulate user data when passing through core network and also carries bearer specific signaling traffic between various core network entities. The PGW is the IP anchor point and where bearer channels are established. The PGW provides the exit and entry point of traffic from the mobile provider's network to the user equipment. It is the service edge of the mobile provider's network, and much of the packet processing takes place there. For instance, packet inspection and filtering, policy enforcement and reporting all take place at the PGW. This connection-oriented mobility architecture incurs costly overhead for setting up, maintaining, and modifying the tunnels, which makes it very challenging for future mobility network which need to support emerging 10's billions of devices in 5G.
Future mobility networks will need to support very diverse types of services with significant different requirements. For instance, V2V will require Ultra-reliable and low latency communications (e.g. connected car) while meter reader like IoT has low bandwidth and relaxed latency requirements. Also parental control is very important for video downloading on the smart phones, while devices like meter readers requires very limited SE services. So, the future mobility network need to have flexible dynamic SE architecture to support diverged types of services and requirements, unlike today's P-GW. We propose a flexible and dynamic SDN controlled per service based SE architecture, along with a tunnel-free connectionless packet routing to the service edge capability. With the native IP protocol suites (i.e., Connectionless), we can flexibly relocate the SE if necessary without worrying about all the signaling for tunnel setup and session migration.
There is a need to provide flexible dynamic Service Edge architecture to support diverged types of services and requirements, unlike today's P-GW. There is a need to extend a connection-less architecture framework into the service anchor (service edge) there is a need to provide management domain, i.e. packet delivery between Base-Station and SE in a connection-less manner to improve the scalability of the future mobility network. There is a need to be able to flexibly relocate the Service Edge if necessary without worrying about all the signaling for tunnel setup and session migration. There is a need to remove the dependency of GTP tunnels when we move towards 5G. It provides the benefits of improving the future mobility network scalability/efficiency and improving end user experience.